Speeding isn't the top reason for crashes on Route 24

State police Capt. Steve Vrona says many people think they can do whatever they want while they are driving.

And that is part of why the top reason for crashes on Route 24 is the failure to stay in lane, not speeding.

“I once saw a man driving (on Route 24) while talking on the phone and reading a map on the steering wheel,” said Vrona, commander of collision analysis and reconstruction at the Middleboro barracks. “He was all over the road, drifting in and out of his lane.”

Lane departures were responsible for one-fourth of all crashes on the highway between 2002 and 2007, according to state Highway Department figures.

Four times as many crashes were caused by lane departures as by speeding, the figures show. Half of those crashes resulted in injury.

The issue is fueling a first-ever “audit” of Route 24's safety conditions.

Local officials from Brockton and several area communities will drive the highway this week and meet on Thursday to discuss ways that safety could be improved.

While much of the problem of lane departure crashes lies with drivers, officials say there may be ways that the engineering of Route 24 could be changed to decrease those accidents.

“The big issue about 24 is that it's not up to interstate standards,” said Ray Guarino, transportation planner for the Old Colony Planning Council, the agency hosting the program on Thursday.

Although it is used like an interstate and has interstate speed limits, Route 24 does not meet the criteria in many significant ways, according to Guarino.

For instance, the angles of many on- and off-ramps are too sharp, he said, while in some places there is virtually no buffer between the road and the median or guardrail.

Sixty-six percent of lane-departure crashes result in a driver hitting the guardrail or the median, state figures show.

“If the guardrail is too close to the travel lane, that doesn't give room for a margin of error,” Guarino said.

This is just one of many topics that may be discussed Thursday, he said.

Officials who have been invited to the event are from Brockton, Stoughton, Avon, Bridgewater, West Bridgewater and Easton.

MassHighway is funding audits of Route 24 and 19 other locations around the state.

At each event, UMass-Amherst traffic researchers will prepare a report based on the information shared by participants.

The report could be used to support proposals to MassHighway for short- or long-term improvement projects on Route 24, according to Guarino.

In early December, a similar audit will be carried out for Thatcher Street, a high-crash road running between Brockton and East Bridgewater.